Herbicide spraying in Colombia

Herbicide spraying in Colombia was the aerial spraying of marijuana fields with glyphosate by the airwing of the Colombian National Police from July 1984, chiefly in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the Serranía del Perijá of Northern Colombia. The police flew helicopters supplied by the United States; the United States State Department flew spray aircraft of its own in the campaign.^{: 32: 20: 17} The spraying followed the military "Two Peninsulas" campaign of 1978 and several years in which the United States urged Colombia to spray its marijuana with paraquat, as Mexico had. Colombia chose glyphosate.

The United States General Accounting Office put the area fumigated from 1984 to 1987 at more than 33,000 hectares, though other official figures are much lower.^: 32 By 1989 United States intelligence judged the traditional growing areas of northern Colombia "virtually cannabis free".^: 68 The growers answered the spraying by moving higher and to other regions, planting smaller fields and hiding marijuana among food crops. The campaign is one of several described at Herbicide spraying of cannabis.

Before 1984

Colombian growers filled the American market from the mid-1970s, after eradication and the fear of paraquat-tainted marijuana among American smokers cut the supply from Mexico and Jamaica (see Herbicide spraying in Mexico). In 1981, 79 per cent of the marijuana consumed in the United States was Colombian.^: 30 The "Two Peninsulas" campaign against the trade, a joint initiative of the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Julio César Turbay, began on 1 November 1978, administered by the army's Battalion No. 2 in Barranquilla. The historian Lina Britto writes that some months later the government fumigated the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. In an account for the drug-policy groups MamaCoca and Indepaz, María Mercedes Moreno writes that Colombian spraying began on the ground under Turbay, with an "Operación Fulminante" launched in the Sierra Nevada with the intention of destroying about 20,000 hectares of marijuana with paraquat. In her account the environmental agency INDERENA wrote to the government on 19 June 1978 that any spraying needed a prior environmental study of the areas to be sprayed.

In April 1981 American drug agents were reported to want paraquat sprayed on Colombian marijuana fields. Through 1983 the marijuana grown in Colombia far exceeded what the National Police could destroy by hand. Colombia resisted American urging to spray from the air.^: 11 In December 1983 the government claimed to have pulled up 8.5 million marijuana plants the year before, but had sprayed none from the air. That month the National Narcotics Council announced that it might begin destroying marijuana and coca by aerial spraying. The government approved limited trials of herbicides on marijuana, which began in April 1984.^: 11: 4 At a national meeting in February 1984 the health minister, Jaime Arias Ramírez, said that there was "una tremenda presión por el uso del paraquat" (tremendous pressure to use paraquat) and that Colombians, not other countries, should take the decision.^: 4

The decision of 1984

After the assassination of the justice minister, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, in 1984, the government decided to start a herbicide spraying campaign against marijuana in the North Coast region.^: 11 In early May the government was reported to be considering herbicides against coca and marijuana, with American officials encouraging the programme and offering training and equipment. A committee of herbicide experts convened by the National Institute of Health had advised that, for human health and the environment, chemical destruction should be the last method considered.^: 4–5

The political scientist Juan Gabriel Tokatlian, quoted by Moreno, dates the decisions: on 14 May 1984 the National Narcotics Council backed chemical eradication of marijuana; on 22 May the Council of Ministers ratified spraying with glyphosate. On 1 June the new justice minister, Enrique Parejo González, authorised the director of the National Police, General Víctor Delgado Mallarino, to spray the crops with glyphosate. Tokatlian writes that the council met in secret for security reasons after the assassination, which in his view probably weighed in the decision to give way to American pressure. On 4 July the council authorised experimental spraying of two hectares; between July and September 1984 a mass spraying of the marijuana crop began.^: 5–6 INDERENA protested that it had opposed paraquat in the council but had not been invited to the sessions on glyphosate, and in August 1984 it wrote that it opposed spraying in the national parks.^: 6

On 11 July 1984 American officials told United Press International that Colombia was using glyphosate in place of paraquat. No United States money was going into the effort, they said, but the Colombians were reported to be using American helicopters first supplied for spotting marijuana and poppy fields.

The aerial programme

The programme was run by SAPOL, the airwing of the National Police, with six helicopters provided by the United States and a fixed-wing Turbo Thrush. National Police pilots flew them from two air bases in north-eastern Colombia. The spraying followed the growing season from April to December.^: 32 In August 1985 a mission of the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control landed at a site where marijuana had been killed by aerial spraying and watched helicopters spray a field nearby. The mission was told that very little had been eradicated in the Serranía del Perijá in 1985, that the growers were resisting and that the helicopters had been fired on.^: 11 The House committee urged the United States to give Colombia many more spray helicopters.^: 11–12 In 1987 the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics Matters flew three Thrush spray aircraft in Colombia, which destroyed about 6,100 hectares that year. The bureau credited aerial herbicide with destroying 85 per cent of the marijuana in the traditional growing areas.^{: 20, 28}

Area sprayed

The figures for the area destroyed do not agree.

• United States House committee, 1986: 3,400 hectares eradicated in the North Coast region by the end of 1984, out of an estimated 10,000 to 13,000, and about 2,500 hectares sprayed with glyphosate by early August 1985.^: 11
• United States intelligence (NNICC), 1987: about 6,000 hectares destroyed in 1985 and 9,700 in 1986, mostly in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the Serranía del Perijá.^: 17
• Tokatlian, from Colombian and American figures: 3,171 or 3,400 hectares in 1984, 2,375 or 6,000 in 1985, 9,700 or 12,000 in 1986.^: 6
• General Accounting Office, 1988: more than 33,000 hectares from July 1984 through 1987, the equivalent of more than 36,000 tonnes of marijuana.^: 32
• An American official quoted in 1992: more than 15,000 acres (about 6,000 hectares) sprayed from 1984 to 1988.

The GAO found no formal procedure for checking that the fields the Colombians reported as sprayed had been sprayed. The State Department's narcotics unit in Bogotá cut the reported figures by 20 per cent to allow for inefficient spraying and checked them only by occasional spot visits.^: 34

Effects on growers

INDERENA officials who flew over the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in December 1986 found that the spraying had pushed growing onto higher and steeper ground: as the police sprayed more, growers cut and burned steeper slopes. Clearing for marijuana reached 2,100 metres in the Frío valley, inside the national park. The GAO reported that growers planted in the lower reaches of canyons, made their fields smaller, mixed marijuana with legitimate crops and spread beyond the traditional areas. Spray pilots reported that the average field had shrunk from about 1.3 hectares before the spraying to about 0.4 hectares in 1986 and that some former marijuana fields were growing legitimate crops. Planting in new areas outpaced the spraying: net marijuana cultivation in Colombia rose by more than 150 per cent between 1985 and 1987.^: 32 Tokatlian writes that production was already moving to Cauca, where yields were higher. In his account the plots grew smaller, were interplanted with legal crops and went into greenhouses.^: 6

In 1989 United States intelligence found the traditional growing areas of northern Colombia virtually free of cannabis, with only small plots in the south-west. It judged that farmers discouraged by the continuous spraying had turned to legitimate crops and that in the San Lucas mountains of Bolívar farmers had switched to coca.^: 68 Colombia later sprayed coca and opium poppy from the air; President Juan Manuel Santos ordered the aerial spraying suspended on 9 May 2015.

Map

Eradication event locations

Timeline

	Date	Category	Event	Department	Locality
News:1985-08-04/Eradication/us-house-delegation-watches-helicopters-spray-a-marijuana-field-in-magdalena	4 August 1985	Eradication	US House delegation watches helicopters spray a marijuana field in Magdalena	Magdalena Department

See also

• Colombia
• Herbicide spraying in Mexico
• Herbicide spraying of cannabis
• Northern Colombia
• Serranía del Perijá
• Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
• United States and cannabis eradication abroad